PCDC was created by a few leaders of the Information Assurance branch of SPAWAR to help students better understand the challenges of the IT field. PCDC is here on the principle of helping students develop their computer technical skills in networking and cyber-security for exciting careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)!

Social

PCDC can be found on Facebook and Twitter! We will be constantly updating our social network pages so make sure to follow us on them! You can also use the Contact page above and fill out the form if you have any questions.

Documents

Several documents are available for download. Please make sure you acquire the documents you need and submit them! You can find all the documents you need in the Documents link above!

Welcome Competing PCDC 2018 Schools

High Schools

Porter Gaud

Palmetto Scholars Academy

South Aiken

Stratford

Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics

Ashley Ridge

Wando

Home School Network

Colleges

College of Charleston

Clemson

Charleston Southern University

University of South Carolina

The Citadel

Lander University

Trident Technical College/ECPI University

South Carolina State

The sixth annual Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition (PCDC),
hosted by Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWARSYSCEN)
Atlantic in collaboration with the South Carolina Lowcountry Chapter of the Armed Forces
Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) will be held April 14-16
at Trident Technical College in North Charleston, South Carolina.
High Schools compete on Saturday, Colleges on Sunday and Pro Teams with embedded college students on Monday.
The goal is to energize high schools, colleges, and their students to focus on the development of
technical skills in the areas of networking and cyber security that will help in preparations
for exciting careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Recruiting of some of the top cyber talent in the state is also an active component of the event.

Qualifying High school and College teams of six students from around South Carolina will compete Saturday.
Each member of the First place team members will receive $500 towards scholarships.
Each competing high school will also receive a laptop and programmable robot.
The top three teams of the previous year are invited back while the remaining five positions
are available to the top five from the third round of the state’s CyberPatriot Competition
for High Schools and the South East Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Qualifier for Colleges.

For the third year in a row,
PCDC we also hold the Palmetto Digital Forensics Competition (PDFC) on 14 April.
There are separate high school and collegiate divisions with three person teams from South Carolina schools competing.
Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science encompassing the process of revealing and interpreting electronic data.
The goal of the process is to perform a structured investigation while maintaining a documented chain of evidence
to find out exactly what happened on a computing device and who was responsible for it.
Competitors solved as many forensics scenarios as possible while earning points.
Each exercise required the participant to utilize various techniques to find and capture a designated “flag”.
Scenarios ranged in difficulty levels that included date/time stamps, hashes, passwords, malware analysis,
reverse engineering, registry analysis, data recovery, and encryption.
Winning team receive prizes and trophies.
Registration information can be found in the documents section of this website.

The Cyber-In-The Middle event, which was started last year will be held on Saturday, 14 April.
It provides a window into Cybersecurity and the PCDC competition for middle school students.
Ninety local middle school students will be assigned to either gold, blue, or red teams.
Curriculum includes: mini-expos, computer deconstruction and reconstruction, and a cyber-introduction.

The documents section of this website includes PCDC Enterprise Briefs, PDFC brochure and the 2018 PCDC Preparation Guide.